English public schools
While football continued to be played in various forms throughout Britain, its
"public" schools (known as private schools in other countries) are widely credited with four key achievements in the creation of modern football codes. First of all, the evidence suggests that they were important in taking football away from its "mob" form and turning it into an organised team sport. Second, many early descriptions of football and references to it were recorded by people who had studied at these schools. Third, it was teachers, students and former students from these schools who first codified football games, to enable matches to be played between schools. Finally, it was at English public schools that the division between "kicking" and "running" (or "carrying") games first became clear.
The earliest evidence that games resembling football were being played at English public schools — mainly attended by boys from the upper, upper-middle and professional classes — comes from the
Vulgaria by William Herman in 1519. Herman had been headmaster at
Eton and
Winchester colleges and his
Latin textbook includes a translation exercise with the phrase "We wyll playe with a ball full of wynde".
[26]
Richard Mulcaster, a student at
Eton College in the early 16th century and later headmaster at other English schools, has been described as "the greatest sixteenth Century advocate of football".
[27] Among his contributions are the earliest evidence of organised team football. Mulcaster's writings refer to teams ("sides" and "parties"), positions ("standings"), a referee ("judge over the parties") and a coach "(trayning maister)". Mulcaster's "footeball" had evolved from the disordered and violent forms of traditional football:
[s]ome smaller number with such overlooking, sorted into sides and standings, not meeting with their bodies so boisterously to trie their strength: nor shouldring or shuffing one an other so barbarously ... may use footeball for as much good to the body, by the chiefe use of the legges.
[28]
In 1633,
David Wedderburn, a teacher from
Aberdeen, mentioned elements of modern football games in a short
Latin textbook called
Vocabula. Wedderburn refers to what has been translated into modern English as "keeping goal" and makes an allusion to passing the ball ("strike it here"). There is a reference to "get hold of the ball", suggesting that some handling was allowed. It is clear that the tackles allowed included the charging and holding of opposing players ("drive that man back").
[citation needed]
A more detailed description of football is given in
Francis Willughby's
Book of Games, written in about 1660.
[29] Willughby, who had studied at
Bishop Vesey's Grammar School,
Sutton Coldfield, is the first to describe goals and a distinct playing field: "a close that has a gate at either end. The gates are called Goals." His book includes a diagram illustrating a football field. He also mentions tactics ("leaving some of their best players to guard the goal"); scoring ("they that can strike the ball through their opponents' goal first win") and the way teams were selected ("the players being equally divided according to their strength and nimbleness"). He is the first to describe a "law" of football: "they must not strike [an opponent's leg] higher than the ball".
[citation needed]
English public schools were the first to codify football games. In particular, they devised the first
offside rules, during the late 18th century.
[30] In the earliest manifestations of these rules, players were "off their side" if they simply stood between the ball and the goal which was their objective. Players were not allowed to pass the ball forward, either by foot or by hand. They could only dribble with their feet, or advance the ball in a
scrum or similar
formation. However, offside laws began to diverge and develop differently at the each school, as is shown by the rules of football from Winchester,
Rugby,
Harrow and
Cheltenham, during between 1810 and 1850.
[30] The first known codes — in the sense of a set of rules — were those of Eton in 1815
[31] and
Aldenham in 1825.
[31])
During the early 19th century, most
working class people in Britain had to work six days a week, often for over twelve hours a day. They had neither the time nor the inclination to engage in sport for recreation and, at the time, many
children were part of the labour force.
Feast day football played on the streets was in decline. Public school boys, who enjoyed some freedom from work, became the inventors of organised football games with formal codes of rules.
Football was adopted by a number of public schools as a way of encouraging competitiveness and keeping youths fit. Each school drafted its own rules, which varied widely between different schools and were changed over time with each new intake of pupils. Two schools of thought developed regarding rules. Some schools favoured a game in which the ball could be carried (as at Rugby,
Marlborough and Cheltenham), while others preferred a game where kicking and dribbling the ball was promoted (as at Eton, Harrow,
Westminster and
Charterhouse). The division into these two camps was partly the result of circumstances in which the games were played. For example, Charterhouse and Westminster at the time had restricted playing areas; the boys were confined to playing their ball game within the school
cloisters, making it difficult for them to adopt rough and tumble running games.
[citation needed]
William Webb Ellis, a pupil at Rugby School, is said to have "with a fine disregard for the rules of football,
as played in his time [emphasis added], first took the ball in his arms and ran with it, thus creating the distinctive feature of the rugby game." in 1823. This act is usually said to be the beginning of Rugby football, but there is little evidence that it occurred, and most sports historians believe the story to be apocryphal. The act of 'taking the ball in is arms' is often misinterpreted as 'picking the ball up' as it is widely believed that Webb Ellis' 'crime' was handling the ball, as in modern soccer, however handling the ball as the time was often permitted and in some cases compulsory,
[32] the rule for which Webb Ellis showed disregard was
running forward with it as the rules of his time only allowed a player to retreat backwards or kick forwards.
The boom in rail transport in Britain during the 1840s meant that people were able to travel further and with less inconvenience than they ever had before. Inter-school sporting competitions became possible. However, it was difficult for schools to play each other at football, as each school played by its own rules. The solution to this problem was usually that the match be divided into two halves, one half played by the rules of the host "home" school, and the other half by the visiting "away" school.
The
modern rules of many football codes were formulated during the mid- or late- 19th century. This also applies to other sports such as lawn bowls, lawn tennis, etc. The major impetus for this was the patenting of the world's first
lawnmower in 1830. This allowed for the preparation of modern ovals, playing fields, pitches, grass courts, etc.
[33]
Apart from Rugby football, the public school codes have barely been played beyond the confines of each school's playing fields. However, many of them are still played at the schools which created them (see
Surviving UK school games below).
Public schools' dominance of sports in the UK began to wane after the
Factory Act of 1850, which significantly increased the recreation time available to working class children. Before 1850, many British children had to work six days a week, for more than twelve hours a day. From 1850, they could not work before 6 a.m. (7 a.m. in winter) or after 6 p.m. on weekdays (7 p.m. in winter); on Saturdays they had to cease work at 2 p.m. These changes mean that working class children had more time for games, including various forms of football.
Firsts
Clubs
Sports clubs dedicated to playing football began in the 18th century, for example
London's Gymnastic Society which was founded in the mid-18th century and ceased playing matches in 1796.
[34][35] The first documented club to bear the title "football club" is one in
Edinburgh,
Scotland, during the period 1824–41.
[36][37] The club forbade tripping but allowed pushing and holding and the picking up of the ball.
[37]
Two clubs which claim to be the world's
oldest existing football club, in the sense of a club which is not part of a school or university, are strongholds of rugby football: the
Barnes Club, said to have been founded in 1839, and
Guy's Hospital Football Club, in 1843. Neither date nor the variety of football played is well-documented, but such claims nevertheless allude to the popularity of rugby before other modern codes emerged.
In 1845, three boys at Rugby school were tasked with codifying the rules then being used at the school. These were the first set of written rules (or code) for any form of football.
[38] This further assisted the spread of the Rugby game. For instance,
Dublin University Football Club—founded at
Trinity College, Dublin in 1854 and later famous as a bastion of the Rugby School game—is the world's oldest documented football club in any code.
Competitions
One of the longest running football fixture is the Cordner-Eggleston Cup, contested between
Melbourne Grammar School and
Scotch College, Melbourne every year since 1858. It is believed by many to also be the first match of
Australian rules football, although it was played under experimental rules in its first year. The first football trophy tournament was the Caledonian Challenge Cup, donated by the Royal
Caledonian Society of Melbourne, played in 1861 under the
Melbourne Rules.
[39] The oldest football league is a rugby football competition, the
United Hospitals Challenge Cup (1874), while the oldest rugby trophy is the
Yorkshire Cup, contested since 1878. The
South Australian Football Association (30 April 1877) is the oldest surviving Australian rules football competition. The oldest surviving soccer trophy is the
Youdan Cup (1867) and the oldest national soccer competition is the English FA Cup (1871).
The Football League (1888) is recognised as the longest running Association Football league. The
first ever international football match took place between sides representing England and Scotland on March 5, 1870 at
the Oval under the authority of the FA. The first Rugby international took place in 1871.
Modern balls
Richard Lindon (seen in 1880) is believed to have invented the first footballs with rubber bladders.
In Europe, early footballs were made out of animal
bladders, more specifically
pig's bladders, which were inflated. Later
leather coverings were introduced to allow the ball to keep their shape.
[40] However, in 1851,
Richard Lindon and
William Gilbert, both shoemakers from the town of
Rugby (near the school), exhibited both round and oval-shaped balls at the
Great Exhibition in London. Richard Lindon's wife is said to have died of lung disease caused by blowing up pig's bladders.
[41] Lindon also won medals for the invention of the "Rubber inflatable Bladder" and the "Brass Hand Pump".
In 1855, the U.S. inventor
Charles Goodyear — who had patented
vulcanized rubber — exhibited a spherical football, with an exterior of vulcanized rubber panels, at the
Paris Exhibition Universelle. The ball was to prove popular in early forms of football in the U.S.A.
[42]
Modern ball passing tactics
"Scientific" football is first recorded in 1839 from
Lancashire[43] and in the modern game in Rugby football from 1862
[44] and from Sheffield FC as early as 1865.
[45][46] The first side to play a passing
combination game was the
Royal Engineers AFC in 1869/70
[47][48][49] By 1869 they were "work[ing] well together", "backing up" and benefiting from "cooperation".
[50] By 1870 the Engineers were passing the ball: "Lieut. Creswell, who having brought the ball up the side then kicked it into the middle to another of his side, who kicked it through the posts the minute before time was called"
[51] Passing was a regular feature of their style
[52] By early 1872 the Engineers were the first football team renowned for "play[ing] beautifully together"
[53] A double pass is first reported from Derby school against
Nottingham Forest in March 1872, the first of which is irrefutably a
short pass: "Mr Absey dribbling the ball half the length of the field delivered it to Wallis, who kicking it cleverly in front of the goal, sent it to the captain who drove it at once between the Nottingham posts"
[54] The first side to have perfected the modern formation was
Cambridge University AFC[55][56][57] and introduced the 2–3–5 "pyramid" formation.
[58][59]
Cambridge rules
In 1848, at
Cambridge University,
Mr. H. de Winton and Mr. J.C. Thring, who were both formerly at
Shrewsbury School, called a meeting at
Trinity College, Cambridge with 12 other representatives from Eton, Harrow, Rugby,
Winchester and Shrewsbury. An eight-hour meeting produced what amounted to the first set of modern rules, known as the
Cambridge rules. No copy of these rules now exists, but a revised version from circa 1856 is held in the library of Shrewsbury School. The rules clearly favour the kicking game. Handling was only allowed for a player to take a
clean catch entitling them to a free kick and there was a primitive offside rule, disallowing players from "loitering" around the opponents' goal. The Cambridge rules were not widely adopted outside English public schools and universities (but it was arguably the most significant influence on
the Football Association committee members responsible for formulating the rules of
Association football).
Sheffield rules
By the late 1850s, many football clubs had been formed throughout the English-speaking world, to play various codes of football.
Sheffield Football Club, founded in 1857 in the English city of
Sheffield by Nathaniel Creswick and William Prest, was later recognised as the world's oldest club playing association football. However, the club initially played its own code of football: the
Sheffield rules. The code was largely independent of the public school rules, the most significant difference being the lack of an
offside rule.
The code was responsible for many innovations that later spread to association football. These included
free kicks[disambiguation needed],
corner kicks, handball,
throw-ins and the crossbar.
[61] By the 1870s they became the dominant code in the north and midlands of England. At this time a series of rule changes by both the
London and
Sheffield FAs gradually eroded the differences between the two games until the adoption of a common code in 1877.
Australian rules
Various forms of football were played in Australia during the
Victorian gold rush, from which emerged a distinct and locally popular sport. While these origins are still the subject of much debate the popularisation of the code that is known today as Australian Rules Football is currently attributed to
Tom Wills.
Wills wrote a letter to
Bell's Life in Victoria & Sporting Chronicle, on July 10, 1858, calling for a "foot-ball club" with a "code of laws" to keep cricketers fit during winter.
[62] This is considered by historians to be a defining moment in the creation of the new sport. Through publicity and personal contacts Wills was able to co-ordinate football matches in
Melbourne that experimented with various rules,
[63] the first recorded of which occurred on July 31, 1858. On 7 August 1858, Wills umpired a relatively well documented schoolboys match between
Melbourne Grammar School and
Scotch College. Following these matches, organised football matches rapidly increased in popularity.
Wills and others involved in these early matches formed the
Melbourne Football Club (the oldest surviving Australian football club) on May 14, 1859. The first members included Wills,
William Hammersley, J.B. Thompson and
Thomas H. Smith. They met with the intention of forming a set of rules that would be widely adopted by other clubs.
The backgrounds of the original rule makers makes for interesting speculation as to the influences on the rules. Wills, an Australian of convict heritage was educated in England. He was a
rugby footballer, a cricketer and had strong links to
indigenous Australians. At first he desired to introduce rugby school rules. Hammersley was a cricketer and journalist who emigrated from England. Thomas Smith was a school teacher who emigrated from Ireland. The committee members debated several rules including those of English public school games. Despite including aspects similar to other forms of football there is no conclusive evidence to point to any single influence. Instead the committee decided on a game that was more suited to Australian conditions and Wills is documented to have made the declaration "No, we shall have a game of our own".
[64] The code was distinctive in the prevalence of the
mark,
free kick,
tackling, lack of an offside rule and that players were specifically penalised for
throwing the ball.
The Melbourne football rules were widely distributed and gradually adopted by the other Victorian clubs. They were redrafting several times during the 1860s to accommodate the rules of other influential Victorian football clubs. A significant re-write in 1866 by
H C A Harrison's committee to accommodate rules from the
Geelong Football Club made the game, which had become known as "Victorian Rules", increasingly distinct from other codes. It used cricket fields, a rugby ball, specialised goal and behind posts, bouncing with the ball while running and later
spectacular high marking. The form of football spread quickly to other
other Australian colonies. Outside of its heartland in southern Australia the code experienced a significant period of decline following
World War I but has since grown
other parts of the world at an amateur level and the
Australian Football League emerged as the dominant professional competition.
During the early 1860s, there were increasing attempts in England to unify and reconcile the various public school games. In 1862, J. C. Thring, who had been one of the driving forces behind the original Cambridge Rules, was a master at
Uppingham School and he issued his own rules of what he called "The Simplest Game" (these are also known as the Uppingham Rules). In early October 1863 another new revised version of the Cambridge Rules was drawn up by a seven member committee representing former pupils from Harrow, Shrewsbury, Eton, Rugby, Marlborough and Westminster.
At the
Freemasons' Tavern, Great Queen Street, London on the evening of October 26, 1863, representatives of several football clubs in the
London Metropolitan area met for the inaugural meeting of
The Football Association (FA). The aim of the Association was to establish a single unifying code and regulate the playing of the game among its members. Following the first meeting, the public schools were invited to join the association. All of them declined, except Charterhouse and Uppingham. In total, six meetings of the FA were held between October and December 1863. After the third meeting, a draft set of rules were published. However, at the beginning of the fourth meeting, attention was drawn to the recently published Cambridge Rules of 1863. The Cambridge rules differed from the draft FA rules in two significant areas; namely running with (carrying) the ball and hacking (kicking opposing players in the shins). The two contentious FA rules were as follows:
IX. A player shall be entitled to run with the ball towards his adversaries' goal if he makes a fair catch, or catches the ball on the first bound; but in case of a fair catch, if he makes his mark he shall not run. X. If any player shall run with the ball towards his adversaries' goal, any player on the opposite side shall be at liberty to charge, hold, trip or hack him, or to wrest the ball from him, but no player shall be held and hacked at the same time.
At the fifth meeting it was proposed that these two rules be removed. Most of the delegates supported this, but
F. M. Campbell, the representative from
Blackheath and the first FA treasurer, objected. He said: "hacking is the true football". However, the motion to ban running with the ball in hand and hacking was carried and Blackheath withdrew from the FA. After the final meeting on 8 December, the FA published the "
Laws of Football", the first comprehensive set of rules for the game later known as
Association Football (later known in some countries as soccer).
The first FA rules still contained elements that are no longer part of association football, but which are still recognisable in other games (such as Australian football and rugby football): for instance, a player could make a fair catch and claim a
mark, which entitled him to a free kick; and if a player touched the ball behind the opponents' goal line, his side was entitled to a
free kick at goal, from 15 yards (13.5 metres) in front of the goal line.
Main article:
Rugby footballIn
Britain, by 1870, there were about 75 clubs playing variations of the Rugby school game. There were also "rugby" clubs in Ireland, Australia, Canada and New Zealand. However, there was no generally accepted set of rules for rugby until 1871, when 21 clubs from London came together to form the
Rugby Football Union (RFU). The first official RFU rules were adopted in June 1871. These rules allowed passing the ball. They also included the
try, where touching the ball over the line allowed an attempt at goal, though drop-goals from marks and general play, and penalty conversions were still the main form of contest.
Rugby league
In 1895, disputes amongst members of the RFU led to a breakaway faction creating its own rules and competitions. Over time this has developed into a distinct code of football known as
rugby league.
As was the case in Britain, by the early 19th century, North American schools and universities played their own local games, between sides made up of students. Students at
Dartmouth College in
New Hampshire played a game called
Old division football, a variant of the association football codes, as early as the 1820s.
The first game of rugby in Canada is generally said to have taken place in
Montreal, in 1865, when
British Army officers played local civilians. The game gradually gained a following, and the
Montreal Football Club was formed in 1868, the first recorded football club in Canada.
In 1869, the
first game played in the United States under rules based on the FA code occurred, between
Princeton and
Rutgers. This is also often considered to be the first U.S. game of
college football, in the sense of a game between colleges (although the eventual form of American football would come from rugby, not association football).
Modern
American football grew out of a match between
McGill University of Montreal, and
Harvard University in 1874. At the time, Harvard students are reported to have played the
Boston Game — a
running code — rather than the FA-based
kicking games favored by U.S. universities. This made it easy for Harvard to adapt to the rugby-based game played by McGill and the two teams alternated between their respective sets of rules. Within a few years, however, Harvard had both adopted McGill's rugby rules and had persuaded other U.S. university teams to do the same. In 1876, at the
Massasoit Convention, it was agreed by these universities to adopt most of the
Rugby Football Union rules, with some variations. Princeton, Rutgers and others continued to compete using soccer-based rules for a few years before switching to the rugby-based rules of Harvard and its competitors. U.S. colleges did not generally return to soccer until the early 20th century.
Rutgers College Football Team, 1882
In 1880,
Yale coach
Walter Camp, devised a number of major changes to the American game. Camp's two most important rule innovations in establishing American football as distinct from the rugby football games on which it is based are
scrimmage and
down-and-distance rules.
Scrimmage refers to the practice of starting action by delivering the ball from the ground to another player's hand. Camp's original rule allowed this delivery to be done only with the feet; the rule was soon changed to allow the ball to be passed by hand. The rule also established a distinct
line of scrimmage which separates the two teams from each other. When a player is tackled, he is ruled
down and play stops, while the teams reset on either side of the line of scrimmage. Play then resumes with the delivery of the ball. Teams are given a limited number of downs to achieve a certain distance (always measured in
yards). In American football, teams are given four downs to advance the ball ten yards, after which possession of the ball changes. In Canadian football, teams are allowed three downs to advance ten yards. These rules created a fundamental distinction between the North American codes and rugby codes. Rugby is still fundamentally a continuous-action game, while North American codes are organized around running discrete "
plays", as defined as starting with the delivery from "scrimmage" and ending with the "down".
American football, in its early years, was an excessively violent game, plagued with several deaths and life-changing injuries every year. The violence became so drastic that
President Theodore Roosevelt threatened to shut down the game in 1905, should rules not be changed to minimize this violence. Several rule changes were put into place that year, but the most enduring has been the introduction of the legal
forward pass, which, like Camp's rule changes of the 1880s, fundamentally changed the nature of the sport. When it became legal to throw the ball forward, an entire new method of advancing the ball emerged. As a result, players became more specialized in their roles, as the different positions on the team required different skill sets. Thus, some players are primarily involved in running with the ball (the
running back) while others specialize in throwing (the
quarterback), catching (the
wide receiver), or blocking (the
offensive line). With the advent of free substitution rules in the 1940s and 1950s, teams could deploy separate offensive and defensive "platoons" which led to even greater specialization.
Over the years Canadian football absorbed some developments in American football, but also retained many unique characteristics. One of these was that Canadian football, for many years, did not officially distinguish itself from rugby. For example, the
Canadian Rugby Football Union, founded in 1884 was the forerunner of the
Canadian Football League, rather than a rugby union body. (The Canadian Rugby Union, today known as
Rugby Canada, was not formed until 1965.) American football was also frequently described as "rugby" in the 1880s.
In the mid-19th century, various traditional football games, referred to collectively as
caid, remained popular in Ireland, especially in
County Kerry. One observer, Father W. Ferris, described two main forms of
caid during this period: the "field game" in which the object was to put the ball through arch-like goals, formed from the boughs of two trees; and the epic "cross-country game" which took up most of the daylight hours of a Sunday on which it was played, and was won by one team taking the ball across a
parish boundary. "Wrestling", "holding" opposing players, and carrying the ball were all allowed.
By the 1870s, Rugby and Association football had started to become popular in Ireland.
Trinity College, Dublin was an early stronghold of Rugby (see the
Developments in the 1850s section, above). The rules of the English FA were being distributed widely. Traditional forms of
caid had begun to give way to a "rough-and-tumble game" which allowed tripping.
There was no serious attempt to unify and codify Irish varieties of football, until the establishment of the
Gaelic Athletic Association (GAA) in 1884. The GAA sought to promote traditional Irish sports, such as
hurling and to reject imported games like Rugby and Association football. The first Gaelic football rules were drawn up by
Maurice Davin and published in the
United Ireland magazine on February 7, 1887. Davin's rules showed the influence of games such as hurling and a desire to formalise a distinctly Irish code of football. The prime example of this differentiation was the lack of an offside rule (an attribute which, for many years, was shared only by other Irish games like hurling, and by Australian rules football).
An English cartoon from the 1890s lampooning the divide in rugby football which led to the formation of
rugby league. The caricatures are of Rev. Frank Marshall, an arch-opponent of player payments, and James Miller, a long-time opponent of Marshall. The caption reads: Marshall: "Oh, fie, go away naughty boy, I don't play with boys who can’t afford to take a holiday for football any day they like!" Miller: "Yes, that's just you to a T; you’d make it so that no lad whose father wasn’t a millionaire could play at all in a really good team. For my part I see no reason why the men who make the money shouldn’t have a share in the spending of it."
The
International Rugby Football Board (IRFB) was founded in 1886, but rifts were beginning to emerge in the code.
Professionalism was beginning to creep into the various codes of football.
In England, by the 1890s, a long-standing
Rugby Football Union ban on
professional players was causing regional tensions within rugby football, as many players in northern England were
working class and could not afford to take time off to train, travel, play and recover from injuries. This was not very different from what had occurred ten years earlier in soccer in Northern England but the authorities reacted very differently in the RFU, attempting to alienate the working class support in Northern England. In 1895, following a dispute about a player being paid broken time payments, which replaced wages lost as a result of playing rugby, representatives of the northern clubs met in
Huddersfield to form the
Northern Rugby Football Union (NRFU). The new body initially permitted only various types of player wage replacements. However, within two years, NRFU players could be paid, but they were required to have a job outside sport.
The demands of a professional league dictated that rugby had to become a better "spectator" sport. Within a few years the NRFU rules had started to diverge from the RFU, most notably with the abolition of the
line-out. This was followed by the replacement of the
ruck with the "play-the-ball ruck", which allowed a two-player ruck contest between the tackler at marker and the player tackled.
Mauls were stopped once the ball carrier was held, being replaced by a play-the ball-ruck. The separate Lancashire and Yorkshire competitions of the NRFU merged in 1901, forming the
Northern Rugby League, the first time the name
rugby league was used officially in England.
Over time, the RFU form of rugby, played by clubs which remained members of national federations affiliated to the IRFB, became known as
rugby union.
The need for a single body to oversee association football had become apparent by the beginning of the 20th century, with the increasing popularity of international fixtures. The English Football Association had chaired many discussions on setting up an international body, but was perceived as making no progress. It fell to associations from seven other European countries: France, Belgium, Denmark, Netherlands, Spain, Sweden, and Switzerland, to form an international association. The
Fédération Internationale de Football Association (
FIFA) was founded in Paris on May 21, 1904. Its first president was
Robert Guérin. The French name and acronym has remained, even outside French-speaking countries.
Both forms of rugby and American football were noted at the time for serious injuries, as well as the deaths of a significant number of players. By the early 20th century in the U.S.A., this had resulted in national controversy and American football was banned by a number of colleges. Consequently, a series of meetings was held by 19 colleges in 1905–06. This occurred reputedly at the behest of President
Theodore Roosevelt. He was considered a fancier of the game, but he threatened to ban it unless the rules were modified to reduce the numbers of deaths and disabilities. The meetings are now considered to be the origin of the
National Collegiate Athletic Association.
One proposed change was a widening of the playing field. However,
Harvard University had just built
a concrete stadium and therefore objected to widening, instead proposing legalisation of the
forward pass. The report of the meetings introduced many restrictions on tackling and two more divergences from rugby: the forward pass and the banning of
mass formation plays. The changes did not immediately have the desired effect, and 33 American football players were killed during 1908 alone. However, the number of deaths and injuries did gradually decline.
Further divergence of the two rugby codes
Rugby league rules diverged significantly from rugby union in 1906, with the reduction of the team from 15 to 13 players. In 1907, a New Zealand professional rugby team toured Australia and Britain, receiving an enthusiastic response, and professional
rugby leagues were launched in Australia the following year. However, the rules of professional games varied from one country to another, and negotiations between various national bodies were required to fix the exact rules for each international match. This situation endured until 1948, when at the instigation of the French league, the
Rugby League International Federation (RLIF) was formed at a meeting in
Bordeaux.
During the second half of 20th century, the rules changed further. In 1966, rugby league officials borrowed the American football concept of
downs: a team could retain possession of the ball for no more than four tackles. The maximum number of tackles was later increased to six (in 1971), and in rugby league this became known as the
six tackle rule.
With the advent of full-time professionals in the early 1990s, and the consequent speeding up of the game, the five metre off-side distance between the two teams became 10 metres, and the replacement rule was superseded by various interchange rules, among other changes.
The laws of rugby union also changed significantly during the 20th century. In particular, goals from
marks were abolished, kicks directly
into touch from outside the
22 metre line were penalised, new laws were put in place to determine who had possession following an inconclusive
ruck or
maul, and the lifting of players in
line-outs was legalised.
In 1995, rugby union became an "open" game, that is one which allowed professional players. Although the original dispute between the two codes has now disappeared — and despite the fact that officials from both forms of rugby football have sometimes mentioned the possibility of re-unification — the rules of both codes and their culture have diverged to such an extent that such an event is unlikely in the foreseeable future.
